SciFi Vine

SciFiSites, later rebranded to The SciFi Vine and abbreviated to SFV or the Vine, was a internet community website for science fiction fans, with messageboards and chatting. It was part of the 'Vine Group', which also included AncientSites and The Pet Vine.

It is where the original members of Profusion first met.

The SciFiVine had a hallmark 'PeoplePanel', which worked like a server-side Instant Messenger. This allowed people to see who else was signed on and contact them. (One of the long-term pipedreams for Profusion is to write something like this.)

New members of the SciFi Vine were asked to choose a city to belong to. These were a way of organising people by interests: thus, for example, somebody primarily interested in Star Wars would join 'Cloud City'. Each city had several families. New members would be asked to select one of these to be their surname: for example, Cloud City had Jades, Skywalkers and so on.

The main feature of the SciFiVine were its groups. Each city and family had its own group, but there were special interest groups open to members from all cities. The most notable of these included The Castle and The Cagliostro, which were both fantasy roleplaying groups.

Members also had ranks (Cadet/Ensign, Pilot), which showed how long they had been members. The higher ranks (Ranger, Scribe and staff positions) were only available to people with paid accounts. They could assign themselves a 'job' (Jaina Jade was a Rogue and Tserisa Evenstar was a Sage), but these did not affect any of the community functions. Members had home pages with customisable graphics and text, and were also allotted a small amount of webhosting space.

The site also had chatrooms, but they were notoriously unreliable. (Pro members tend to remember even these with a touch of nostalgia.)

After the Vine finally closed (or was rebranded out of all recognition), many of the groups left to set up elsewhere. Many of them settled at EZBoard. The Pro members got out early and went initially to Excite: see Pro's History.

Cities of the Vine

• Fornax - space and Star Trek
• Andromeda
• Draco
• Milky Way? - Babylon 5
• Centaurus - SF literature & authors
• Beta Centauri - fantasy (most of Pro's membership was here)
• Cloud City - Star Wars (last city added)

Pro members from the SciFi Vine

• Mutt was and is Baskerville Phoenix of Beta Centauri.
• Ree was and is Jaina Jade of Cloud City, and Pasht Sphinx and Lady Knight of Beta Centauri.
• Tserisa? was Tserisa Evenstar of Beta Centauri.
• Jo was and is Lunzie Istari of Beta Centauri.
• MommyRina was Sarina Hippogriff of BetaCentauri, cabbage enchantress or sorceress suprema.